Sherman Kaplan wrote:
emfbi, but...

There is really no such thing as real sound in a listening environment
except in the original environment where the sound or music was created.
Consider the argument in Plato's discussion of "the cave" in The Republic.
People in the cave saw shadows cast by their fire, thinking those shadows
were the reality, not the people or forms whose shadows were being cast.
It's the same thing with music reproduction. We may have an ideal of
"reality", but all we can achieve, no matter how good, is a "shadow."
Clearly, no matter how fine the equipment and room conditions, there is no
way a 100 piece symphony orchestra is going to sound "real" when squeezed
across a 15 foot wall. Now, if you are talking dynamics, timbre, sound
frequency, that is something which existing high end audio equipment can
come very close to reproducing. But, even that will only be an approximation
of an original sound source.

Sherm

wrote in message
...

Buster Mudd wrote:

Scott, you get points for tenaciousness, but you still seem to be
conveniently ignoring the gist of my comments. All I'm saying is "the
way we want things to sound real" is not the same thing as "the way
things really sound". It is however exactly the same as "the way we
want things to sound", so there's no reason to add that additional word
"real" as if it were a qualifier. If anything it only obfuscates the
point.


I respectfully disagree. one can want unrealistic sound. So there is a
reason to add the word real. It is a qualifier. And it should clarify
things. IMO people who are splashing their playback all over the
listening room , basking in the reverb and enjoying it, want
unrealistic sound. That was the jist of my original point. I'm not one
of those people. I think listening rooms are critical and are in no way
analogus to envirements made for the playing of live acoustic music.
And don't forget it is quite possible and unfortunately fairly common
to get real sound that is not what we want in the way of sound.



Scott


Or, to put it more succinctly, the best we can hope for is the most
realistic interpretation of the actual performance.

CD